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UN body urges US to shut Guantanamo Stephanie Nebehay / Reuters | May 19 2006 The United Nations committee against torture told the United States on Friday it should close any secret prisons abroad and the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba, saying they violated international law. The 10 independent experts, who examined the U.S. record at home and abroad, urged President George W. Bush's administration to "rescind any interrogation technique" that constituted torture or cruel treatment of foreign terrorism detainees. It cited use of dogs to terrify detainees, "water-boarding" which is a form of mock drowning, and sexual humiliation. The United States "should ensure that no one is detained in any secret detention facility under its de facto effective control" and "investigate and disclose the existence of any such facilities," said the committee, which has moral authority but no legal power to enforce its recommendations. "Detaining persons in such conditions constitutes, per se, a violation of the Convention," said the committee which examines compliance with the 1987 U.N. Convention against Torture, or other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Secret detainees are deprived of fundamental legal rights and could face torture, according to the body which regretted the U.S. "no comment" policy on allegations of secret detention. The United States is holding hundreds of terrorism suspects, most arrested since al Qaeda's September 11 attacks in 2001, at its prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. Rights groups say the United States is believed to be holding in undisclosed locations Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged operational mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, a member of the Hamburg, Germany cell that led them. Another such detainee is Abu Zubaydah, a suspected senior al Qaeda operational planner. The activist group Human Rights Watch lists the three men, captured in Pakistan, as "ghost prisoners" believed to be in U.S. custody but without legal rights or access to lawyer. Washington, which sent 30 senior officials to Geneva in early May for the committee's two-day hearings, defended its treatment of foreign terrorism suspects held abroad, saying there had been "relatively few actual cases of abuse". U.S. officials said waterboarding was not listed in the current Army Field Manual and was therefore banned. RELIABLE REPORTS OF TORTURE The committee voiced concern at "reliable reports of acts of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" by U.S. military or civilian personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq. "The state party (the United States) should take immediate measures to eradicate all forms of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by its military or civilian personnel ... and should promptly and thoroughly investigate such acts and prosecute all those responsible...," it said in its 10-page findings. The Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba should be closed and its inmates either brought to trial or released, "ensuring they are not returned to any state where they could face a real risk of being tortured", the committee said. It regretted secrecy surrounding U.S. practice of asking countries for "diplomatic assurances" that they will not torture detainees being sent by Washington. There was a lack of judicial scrutiny and monitoring to ensure that guarantees were upheld. The committee also voiced concerns at use of electro-shock devices in U.S. prisons, shackling of women inmates during childbirth and the "harsh regime" in "supermaximum prisons". It told the United States to report back in a year. "The report obviously is extremely critical of U.S. policies and appropriately so," Jennifer Daskal, U.S. advocacy director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. "We hope that the United States will take heed of this report and really begin to rethink and change its policies on a number of practices, including secret prisons, lack of accountability for abuse, and transfer of prisoners to places where they may be tortured," she said.
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